Gaza: crushing the ants
"The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel's High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life).
The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington's past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing -- so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification.
To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza's power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this, providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African country that could not replenish them.
Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by 'Araboushim' in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently. "
Noam Chomsky - The Most Wanted List: International Terrorism - 26 February 2008
Labels: air strikes, Israel/Palestine
posted by David Wearing at 9:40 AM
1 Comments:
I guess Zorba the Greek wasn't fortunate enough to be thousand of miles from his victims to remain coolly detached from their fate. Here's an excerpt from a book on conflicts in Zorba's part of the world:
...while Zorba is familiar in the West largely as a spontaneous, drunken dancer, he was a character with a darker past. Zorba hailed from Macedonia, where he had spent his youth among groups of nationalist comitadji, "irregulars" who looted, raped, and murdered any Turks or Bulgars who fell into their hands...The great turning point of Zorba's life occurred when he killed a Bulgar priest who had been leading opposition to the Greeks. He slit the man's throat and cut off his ears. Then, a few days later, he encountered five children sitting in the village:
They were all dressed in black, barefoot, holding one another by the hand and begging. Three girls and two boys. The eldest couldn't have been more than ten, and the youngest was still a a baby. The eldest girl was carrying the youngster in her arms, kissing him and caressing him so that he shouldn't cry.
Zorba began to question them and was devastated to discover that they were the family of the priest he murdered. He wept, gave the children all his money, and ran from the village. "And I am still running," he lamented.
Also, an interesting video of a Chomsky interview in which he talks about a related theme: self-deception (between minutes 9-15).
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